The Facial Expressions and The Types of Facial Rigs

 For the past three years, I have been fascinated by facial rigging.  I absolutely love rigging character's body and continue to learn about rigging props.  I'm taking a facial rigging class that I'm super excited to take at CGMA with Jose Antonio Martin Martin.  In the first week I learned some really interesting points about facial expressions that I never thought about and I wanted to share some of my findings. 

The very first point that I learned about was the fact the facial expressions are the same everywhere.  It doesn't matter your nationality, culture, race, gender, or age as a joyful smile shows happiness to anyone anywhere.    

Smiling Faces From Google

While people have many different expressions, there are the big 6 main expressions which are sadness, anger, joy, fear, disgust, and surprise.  The many other expressions fall into different variants, may be called differently, or is a combination of two main expressions.  

This point really surprised me but it was Darwin who suggested that facial expressions are a universal language because they mean the same everywhere.  Facial expressions are also innate rather than a learned behavior.  This is very different than hand gestures because in different places, hand gestures don't mean the same thing.  Facial expressions can also be broken down into Action Units in the FACS (Face Action Coding System).

I also learned about different types of facial rigs.  The first distinction between the facial rigs is if they are shape based or deformer/joint based, or a combination of all.  

Some facial rigs are stylized and they are created with shapes.  These rigs use FACS plus extra shapes and lots of tweakers and deformers.  Rigs that are stylized are cartoon rigs.  An example would be Ratatouille by Pixar.

Ratatouille by Pixar, Image found on Google

Facial rigs can also be realistic.  These rigs have a lot of shapes and a complete set of FACS.  They also have many combinations and extra shapes and they often have extra rigging set ups but not as many deformers as cartoon rigs.  A good example of this is Thanatos from Avengers Infinity War.

Thanatos from Avengers Infinity War, Image found on Google

The last type of facial rigs are gaming rigs and they tend to be joint based with a few blend-shape correctives.  Because gaming engines have restrictions, facial rigs are created this way.  The engines are becoming more powerful with fewer restrictions so these types of rigs are constantly evolving.  My very first facial rig I did while at FIEA was a joint based rig I created for Hades.

Last of Us Facial Rig Example, Image found on Google